Nutritional stability, a food system's capacity to provide sufficient nutrients despite disturbance, is crucial yet challenging to measure in diversified agriculture. Using 55 years of data from 184 countries (22,000 crop-nutrient networks), this study simulates crop and nutrient loss to quantify nutritional stability and its relationship with crop diversity across regions, over time, and between imports and domestic production. A positive, saturating relationship between crop diversity and nutritional stability is found, but stability remained stagnant or decreased in all regions except Asia. This is attributed to diminishing returns on crop diversity, with recent gains involving crops with fewer nutrients or those already present. Imports positively correlate with crop diversity and nutritional stability, indicating market exposure for many countries.
Publisher
Nature Communications
Published On
Sep 07, 2021
Authors
Charlie C. Nicholson, Benjamin F. Emery, Meredith T. Niles
Tags
nutritional stability
crop diversity
agriculture
international trade
sustainability
food systems
crop-nutrient networks
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